Articles tagged with 'Saxton Hale'

So you’re playing some Team Fortress 2 when all of a sudden you turn into solid gold. You were just killed by a player wearing a tuxedo, holding a small golden statuette of a shirtless, hairy Australian man. You may say to yourself “I hate my life and everything in it”, or you may ask yourself “wait, how can I get one of those things”?

Way back in May of 2009, Valve introduced Team Fortress players to the Sniper vs. Spy Update, which at the time was TF2’s most ambitious game update yet – providing both the Sniper and Spy classes with three significant new weapons each, as well as several new maps, alongside a brand new gamemode. But this update brought us something else, something which would leave a lasting impact not only on TF2 itself, but on all of Valve’s future work, as a whole… hats.

Yes, the Sniper vs. Spy Update was when TF2 got its 9 first rare cosmetic headgear items – one for each playable class. Since then, Valve (alongside numerous item designers from the Team Fortress community) have added 259 more hats to TF2- and so, by now, most people have forgotten about those 9 original hats… which makes it all the more interesting that Valve has actually decided to permanently retire them from the game’s item circuit.

The only time voting has ever been exciting, terrifying, and completely nerve-wracking, (all at the same time) in the history of humankind… was probably when Valve had us shooting the hell out of each other like never before, then patiently re-editing the footage into a cinema masterpiece (also like never before), all in the name of attaining a foot-high Australium bust of Saxton Hale. Evidently, I’m referring to TF2’s First Annual Saxxy Awards, which took place in May of 2011.

Well, I hope you’ve been keeping your voting finger in good shape, for it’s all going to come rushing back very soon. And by “very soon“, I mean “literally right now“.